


Guilt

by allyarra



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, M/M, TWCP, deputy!Derek, deputy!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 15:04:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyarra/pseuds/allyarra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some mornings Stiles will wake up and reach out a hand for Derek, as if expecting him to still be in bed and when he finds the bed empty and cold for a moment he’ll wonder that Derek actually woke up before him for once. Stiles is never sure whether or not he loves or hates those moments the most because for a moment he’s happy and everyone is alive and life is great, but then the moment ends and he has to go through their loss all over again. He hates endings more than anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt

Some mornings Stiles will wake up and reach out a hand for Derek, as if expecting him to still be in bed and when he finds the bed empty and cold for a moment he’ll wonder that Derek actually woke up before him for once. Stiles is never sure whether or not he loves or hates those moments the most because for a moment he’s happy and everyone is alive and life is great, but then the moment ends and he has to go through their loss all over again. He hates endings more than anything.

* * *

 

Derek didn’t trust the new wolf in town, the one Stiles had met while away at college, but he was Stiles’ friend and Derek trusted Stiles. He’d long ago come to the conclusion that it was better to trust Stiles than himself and while that often made Stiles’ heart hurt, he was grateful for it in this case. Besides, Alex would never hurt any of Stiles’ pack, any of the people he loved, it just wasn’t in his character and Stiles considered himself a great judge of character.

So when Alex had asked permission to follow him home to Beacon Hills after graduation Stiles really hadn’t understood what the problem was. After all, Scott and Isaac were forever bringing strays home, Stiles should be allowed to do so every once in awhile too. It’s not like Alex wanted to move into the house with Derek and Stiles, wanted to sleep in their bed, he just wanted to live in the same town as the only friend he had. Stiles hadn’t seen a problem with that. Besides, Stiles has other things to worry about. Like the fact that his boyfriend is being a huge butthole about his job.

Apparently only Derek is allowed to work at the police station, even though it’s Stiles who has been preparing all his life to become law enforcement. Stiles might not have talked about it often, okay, pretty much at all, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t been on this trajectory ever since his dad had pinned a fake sheriff’s badge onto little Stiles’ chest when he was six years old and told Stiles that someday he’d be the one protecting the town.

The fact that Derek was now a deputy, had been for more than a year, made his disapproval of Stiles’ career choice sting more than a little. Okay, so the disapproval would have hurt in any case, this just made it even worse. It’s not even like Stiles was going out and joining the NYPD SWAT team or the army or something that would put him in danger all the time. He was already in the know for the whole supernatural situation Beacon Hills had going on, it wasn’t like becoming a deputy was actually all that much more dangerous that Stiles just living his normal life. Derek didn’t quite see it that way.

“I don’t want to talk about work,” he would say when he got in after a long shift and saw Stiles, carefully putting away his gun and badge before padding into the kitchen, looking for something to eat. “Work should stay at work, it shouldn’t follow me home.”

The first time he’d said that Stiles had thought that had been it, that that had been Derek’s little hang up and that as long as Stiles made an effort to keep their home life and work life separate then everything would be fine. He’d been wrong about that, just as he’d been wrong about so many other things.

* * *

 

Rainy days make his right knee ache and he has to spend a long time rubbing feeling into the scars that make up his left hand. Cold days are worse though, especially when there’s freshly fallen snow on the ground as well. That’s when his heart hurts and there’s nothing he can do about it now. The only ones who could have saved him from the pain have been dead for years and all he has left is his damned job.

* * *

 

It’s the first death that really makes Stiles aware of what Derek’s problem really is. They’re both out in the woods, back where they’d once met to escape from the pack and have some time alone, just the two of them, in that time when they’d just started to discover how great they could be together. It makes a lump grow in Stiles’ throat to think of them as they were all those years ago, so much younger and possibly even more innocent.

It had been in the days after the Alpha Pack but before the fae, back when their problems had just been staying alive and helping Scott find a way to be with Allison. When Derek had yet to figure out that of all the people in the world, Stiles was one person who would never willingly betray him and that maybe, just maybe, he needed Stiles in order to be not just a better person, but a better alpha. Now he’s got that all figured out and he’s learned to trust his own instincts a little more than he once had, but Stiles doesn’t know that. Stiles doesn’t know a lot of things.

Like who the hell killed Danny Mahealani and left his body strewn through the woods. It would be eerily reminiscent of that night when Scott was first bit except for the fact that Danny is in a lot more than just two pieces. They’d only been able to identify him because some jogger had actually tripped over his severed head.

Stiles has to tamp down on his gag reflex really hard, something he hasn’t had to do very often in the six years since his best friend had become a creature of the night. Derek makes an aborted attempt to comfort him but Stiles shrugs it off. Their personal life is separate from work, it’s something that Stiles has come to appreciate.

It’s only when they get home that night that Stiles allows Derek to hold him while he cries and Derek confesses that he never wanted stiles to become a deputy because he was always already in enough danger, he didn’t need to overtly be tramping around crime scenes caused by rogue elements (because the claw marks are unmistakable, Danny was killed by a werewolf).

* * *

 

He’s known as the Sheriff now, and the older residents sometimes talk about the fact that he’s second generation, that there’s been a Sheriff Stilinski in Beacon Hills for more than forty years. They don’t talk about the fact that the previous one had been killed by the job and that the current one would be the last. Already some kids refer to him as Crazy Old Stilinski and it makes him laugh in a bitter way. He does live out alone in the woods after all, once upon a time he and Scott might have made fun of a lonely old man in much the same way.

* * *

 

It’s only when Lydia’s body turns up next that they realize that this wolf is specifically attacking their pack, starting with the members the furthest outside. Lydia might have drifted away from the pack after they graduated from high school, but she’d returned to Beacon Hills after college, the same as everyone else. She’d been picking up old relationships; loose ends she’d left hanging for four years and had been sliding carefully back into their lives.

The funeral had been large and depressing with people from all over the country flying in to attend, she’d been just as popular away at school as she had been at home. Allison had been nearly inconsolable, only the heavy weight of her pregnancy stopped her from going on a bender similar to the one she’d gone on when her mother had died. Instead she’d made Stiles promise that Lydia would be avenged, that they’d catch this killer before he got to another person.

Stiles had sworn he’d kill whoever it was that was attacking him and Allison had smiled at him, that smile that lit up her whole face and made Stiles realize why Scott loved her so much every time she smiled that way. Only this time her smile held a little less warmth and a little more steel.

It was the last time Stiles saw her alive. She went missing the next morning and her body was found two days later, bleeding out from where her baby had been cut from her body. The baby itself was perfectly formed but so, so tiny and still covered in blood from its violent birth. The hospital later told them that while the baby had seemed fully formed, its lungs hadn’t been ready yet, that it had been too early and they hadn’t worked.

Scott had cried at the funeral for his wife and daughter as they were buried next to his mother, who had died in a car accident more than a year before. Stiles had held tightly to Derek’s hand and tried not to think of the baby the size of his hand whose birth they’d been so excited for and who would now never draw her first breath, buried with her mother.

* * *

 

The house groans sometimes and Stiles likes to think it’s the voices of those who have been lost trying to communicate with the living. The only problem is that he’s the only one left alive of the once large Hale Pack, a title that had once belonged to Derek and had taken him years to shed. Stiles will take that title with him to the grave.

* * *

 

Isaac’s death is another blow, one that has Scott almost on his knees and leaves Derek reeling, but Stiles has no grief left. He’s got anger, the sharp edge of rage driving his investigation. He keeps pictures of the dead on his desk and nothing else, no reminders of the living to keep him from despairing. He can’t afford to think of everything that he still has, not when Scott seems to be losing everything even faster than Stiles is.

Erica’s and Boyd’s pictures are added to his desk and that’s when he really starts to go crazy, but that’s okay because the rest of the pack is as well. It’s just Scott and Derek and Stiles left now, the original three, and Stiles can’t even concentrate on the living.

Alex comes in to offer his services in tracking down this rogue but surprisingly it is Stiles’ father that turns him away, telling him that this is too personal to allow outsiders in now. Alex bows out gracefully but Stiles notices the hurt that flickers across his face, the betrayal when Stiles doesn’t even make an attempt to defend him. Once Stiles might have said something, but those tender feelings have been ripped out of him by the deaths.

He just lets Alex walk out without realizing that he still has three people that he can lose.

* * *

 

It is perhaps Stiles’ biggest regret that he never showed as much affection as he was capable of when his loved ones were still alive. He’d drowned himself in his work just as his dad had drowned himself in his own work and alcohol after his mom died. Apparently Stilinski men don’t have a high tolerance for loss, but then that’s something that no one would ever wish for, or, at least, something that no one should ever have to wish for.

* * *

 

It’s Scott’s death that really wakes him up, which brings all his pain back to the front of his mind, out from behind the wall that he’d constructed in order to keep functioning. Scott, who had lost everyone except his alpha and his best friend, who’d been the vulnerable one in the pack and might have once been their best fighter, but had been reduced to an emotional wreck.

Stiles buried him next to Allison and their daughter. The only ones to attend were Derek and his father. They paid their respects and then withdrew to allow Stiles his own private goodbye. Not that they went very far, after all, their pack was being preyed upon and neither of them wanted to lose Stiles next.

For a long time Stiles said nothing at all, just sat in the bitter cold of that November evening and thought about all the choices he’d made, everything that had brought him to this point, where he’d been left with only two men in the world that he cared about. He reached out and carefully traced the words of Scott’s gravestones, the carved letters of his name and the cold numbers that spelled out his date of birth and his date of death, the years between them entirely too small.

Finally he stood and looked over the small group of graves that made up the entirety of the McCall family before wandering to where the rest of the pack had been buried. He spent a moment with each of them before returning to join his dad and Derek. They had a killer to catch after all.

* * *

 

It’s strange sometimes, to think about how Stiles had killed his entire family by trusting the wrong person, just as Derek had all those years ago. At least Derek had had the excuse of being young and stupid and in love. Stiles had no one to blame but himself and his inability to let go of those he considered friends, no matter how far they were from friends in reality.

* * *

 

Stiles dedication finally pays off when he catches Alex in the act. Too bad he’s still too late. He draws his gun and shoots methodically, lodging more than a few into Alex’s body before the charging werewolf drops to the ground. Stiles stands over him and aims his gun right between the beast’s eyes but he doesn’t shoot, not yet.

“Why?” he demands, because he has to know. He’s always had to know the reason for everything, it’s part of why he was always so determined to follow his dad into law enforcement. Alex’s face is human as he stares up beseechingly at Stiles.

“Because they had you,” he says and it’s like a punch to the gut. This is Stiles’ fault, all of it, all of the death and grief and sorrow, it’s on his shoulders. Because he brought Alex here and then left him alone. So he raises the gun again and his finger tightens on the trigger.

He stares at Alex’s body for a long moment, at the vacant expression in his eyes and the bullet wound in his forehead and then he’s moving, running to the bloody body that Alex had abandoned to charge at him.

Derek’s throat has been ripped out and his body has been cut in half and it’s like all those years ago, when Scott and he had found Laura’s body buried in his yard, in what had become their yard. Stiles lets out a sob as he falls to his knees and he reaches out with one trembling hand, unable to bring himself to touch Derek’s face, to feel the roughness of his perpetual stubble under his fingertips.

Derek’s eyes are still open, but they’ve begun to cloud over and Stiles can no longer see the brilliant color in them as he lays his head down on his dead boyfriend’s chest and lets out the sobs that he’s been holding back ever since Lydia’s death. His dad and the other deputies allow him as much privacy as possible as they remove Alex’s body and prepare to burn it.

* * *

 

Derek is buried with the rest of his family and it’s a long hike from his house, the house that Derek had left to him, but he makes it twice a week. He used to go more often but time dulls even the most painful of wounds. It never stops hurting though.

* * *

 

Three years after that horrible fall Stiles’ dad dies in his sleep. A heart attack the doctors say, there was nothing that could be done. Even with his improved diet in recent years he’d lived a hard life and the stress had finally gotten to him, causing his heart to give out.

Stiles had gone home that day to an empty house and for the first time in his entire life he was left all alone. He’d finally lost everyone, every last person he’d ever cared about was dead. Nothing was left to him now, nothing but his job. The one that had caused Derek so much worry and annoyance.

But Stiles couldn’t give it up, not now, not after everything. It’s all he has left of his dad, and even more than that it’s something of Derek as well. It’s his place in the town, the only thing that keeps him from wallowing in despair. The job’s what keeps him waking up in the morning and getting out of bed, especially after he buries his father. There’s nothing else in Beacon Hills to keep him going, after all.

* * *

 

Every year the holidays roll around and Stiles watches the town paint itself over in festivities, watches young families out shopping and friends meeting up for coffee and his loneliness is painted in bright red and green. He has to stop himself some mornings from giving out citations for every little thing, lest people begin to think that the sheriff is more than a bit of a Grinch.

It would be fine, he would love to see their happiness, the happiness of the town that he’s protected for almost his entire life, but he has no one to share those feelings with. He goes home alone and goes to sleep in a cold bed. There are no sounds of children or even people in his empty home, the one that Derek had rebuilt for the two of them, for their life together. Stiles is all alone, with only the ghosts of the past for company. He stopped caring long ago.

**Author's Note:**

> For Chaos Dragon, for the Sterek Campaign's charity project. Her commission was the prompt of Stiles becoming a deputy and Derek already being one, and not okay with Stiles joining law enforcement. And also for [Alyse](http://www.alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com), who helped to inspire my idea for this prompt and pushed me through the writing of it.


End file.
